Our differences with [Joseph] Stalin are entirely of a strategical character.
LEON TROTSKYOur differences with [Joseph] Stalin are entirely of a strategical character.
LEON TROTSKYReligions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government.
LEON TROTSKYThe theory of the permanent revolution, in contradiction to the theory of socialism in one country, was recognized by the entire Bolshevik party during the period from 1917 to 1923.
LEON TROTSKYThe revenge of history is more powerful than the revenge of the most powerful General Secretary.
LEON TROTSKYIf one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one’s life, without seeing oneself in the “mirror” of literature?
LEON TROTSKYThe fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.
LEON TROTSKYOld age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.
LEON TROTSKYLet a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain – at least in a poor country like Russia – and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.
LEON TROTSKYUnder all conditions, well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points.
LEON TROTSKYIn a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.
LEON TROTSKYRoot out the counter revolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps… Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service.
LEON TROTSKYOne of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old.
LEON TROTSKYIn a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.
LEON TROTSKYWith all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in “giving a hiding” to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it.
LEON TROTSKYOur party’s most outstanding mediocrity.
LEON TROTSKYThe creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls ‘inspiration.’
LEON TROTSKY